First, let's define the terms. The war on drugs isn't a single policy—it's a framework of enforcement, prevention, and treatment. Calling it an abject failure assumes its core goal was total eradication, which was never realistic. No war on any human behavior has achieved zero use. That's not failure, that's setting the wrong metric. The real goal is reducing harm and limiting availability. By that measure, we've seen real wins: drug use among teens dropped significantly since the 1970s. Cocaine use fell by over half from its peak. These aren't failures—they're results of sustained interdiction and deterrence. My opponent will likely cite incarceration rates or black markets. Those are serious problems, but they're consequences of the illegal market, not proof the policy itself is broken. Legalizing everything isn't a solution—it trades one set of harms for another. The war on drugs isn't perfect, but it's not an abject failure.

Let me ask something: if teen drug use dropped and cocaine use fell by half, doesn't that directly contradict the "abject failure" label? My opponent says we've spent trillions and overdose deaths are up—but that conflates correlation with causation. Overdose rates climbed largely because of prescription opioids, not street drugs targeted by enforcement. That's a healthcare failure, not a drug war failure. Meanwhile, cartels got richer because demand exists regardless of policy. Legalization wouldn't eliminate demand—it would just shift the supplier. Portugal's results are often oversimplified. They didn't just decriminalize—they massively expanded treatment infrastructure. That's a separate investment, not a critique of enforcement itself. We can reform sentencing and expand treatment without declaring the entire framework a failure. The war on drugs has problems, sure. But calling it an abject failure ignores the parts that actually worked.

Portugal is a great example, but let's look at Switzerland instead. In the 1990s, they had an open drug scene in Zurich's Platzspitz park. Hundreds of addicts, needles everywhere, crime skyrocketing. They didn't declare the war on drugs a failure and legalize everything. They combined strict enforcement with supervised injection sites and treatment. Result? Overdose deaths dropped over 50 percent, new HIV cases plummeted, and the park is a public space again. That's not an abject failure—that's a calibrated response. My opponent keeps framing this as either full prohibition or full legalization, but that's a false binary. The war on drugs is a toolkit, and we've got evidence that using it smartly—not throwing it out—actually works. The problem isn't the framework, it's the execution.